


4 errors, 1 warning

by FangZ



Category: Dir en grey
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Band, Blood, Butterfly Effect, Japanese, Oneshot, Psychological, Violence, metal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2019-02-14 12:13:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13007532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FangZ/pseuds/FangZ
Summary: What if DEG never really existed? (AU from Die's perspective)





	4 errors, 1 warning

You never miss anything in the world the way you miss the things you destroyed yourself. It kills me to think how one thing, one tiny problem can, in the right circumstances and with the right timing, just punch you in the face, bring you to your knees, burn your entire world to a handful of ashes, all before you even get a chance to understand what’s going on.  


I dropped out of college and left my family’s house out of my own volition. It was “that age”. And in the absence of someone interested enough in what would ever become of me, moving to another city with my girlfriend seemed like a decision with lots of wins and not many compromises. Yes, I was “that person” you’ve heard your friends or family talk about, “that guy” who did this and that without thinking how it would ruin God knows what else he had left; I was that guy every other person is glad they aren’t, the guy his friends talked about behind his back even though that was no real secret to either him or them.  


I started playing guitar when I was a kid. I was very good for my age, because I wanted to play in a band. I wanted this so much. I wanted to see the world and be loved, be famous. What I found out instead was that things don’t always go the way we want. Music is art and art is meant to be shared. But my family never really thought much of my “trifles”. My girlfriend couldn’t care less; she didn’t like the music anyway. And our neighbors hated the noise. And without any support from the people around me, playing music became an increasingly bitter endeavor. I ended up quitting. That didn’t stop me from getting my hair dyed an obnoxious shade of red or from going to concerts every now and then, but my rockstar dreams slowly started to fade away as I became more and more convinced it just wasn’t meant to be. Every now and then, I looked at my monotone, colorless life and asked myself whether the bitterness from before was not actually better – better than feeling nothing, anyway.  


And just a few days ago I realized that I wasn’t even capable of cherishing a dull and simple life such as that. I’d been suspecting that my girlfriend had been cheating on me for a long time. I made the decision to hurt her before she could hurt me again – to cheat on her and let her see it, to allow myself to see her face when she did. But as it turns out, my assumptions were in fact, nothing more than assumptions. In just one day I lost my partner, my home and, through total and utter indifference towards everything else I had left, I lost my job, too.  


So I reaped what I sowed. It was December, but the harvest was quick and all but rich – a few days of staying and sleeping outside in the cold. My revenge couldn’t wait for salary day, so a hotel room was out of the question as well. I barely had enough money to buy food – but certainly enough money to buy some cheap alcohol and make the best of my “rockstar” life on the streets. I would have not believed it coming from another person, but having gone through this myself, these days passed so fast they barely felt like hours. At the same time, I feel compelled to think there were entire years between the last moment of my former life and whatever my life has come to now.  
I already stopped caring. I grabbed my things and blanket and went to sit beside the nearest convenience store for the night. Who knows when the pain calls for just one more drink to stop it? I hadn’t eaten anything in hours. I figured this way I would just starve myself to death – and then again, what if I did? I’d already sunk as low as I could – I would have been glad for this drama to end sooner. A few more hours passed and it started getting light outside. I’d survived another night – what an accomplishment! What for, I did not know.  


A man walked out of the pub that was across the street. He was tall and skinny, kind of like me, but his hair was black like the winter coat he was wearing. Clearly he was trying very hard not to stumble upon his own feet and fall flat upon his face. He stopped and leaned against the wall of the pub, trying to regain his balance. Funnily, he did not appear bummed out about his state. I couldn’t hear him from where I was, but it looked like he was even laughing at himself. No friends to take care of him when he was this drunk, and he still seemed to have a good time. The way I saw it, we were two more or less miserable guys just trying to drink our worldly worries away – I was even tempted to gesture him to cross the street over to where I was and just have a seat so we could have a drunk, pointless chat over some cheap vodka, but I thought it better not to.  


But I’ll be damned if I didn’t think it was strange and even a bit scary when the young man left the support of the wall behind him and went to cross the street, all the while looking at me for some reason. No one was near him to pull him back and I tried to yell as loudly as I could, to tell him to wait; but after sitting in the cold for so long, doing little more than drinking and smoking the remaining cigarettes I had, my voice was too hoarse and damaged and there was no way for the drunk man to see the Toyota speeding his way. The driver hit the brakes when seeing him, but at the speed he was going at, it wasn’t much use. The brunet got hit, and upon the impact, his body rolled over the hood, off the car and down the street. The car still went a few good meters further, sliding on the slippery street – as streets sadly are in December – and hitting another car coming from the opposite direction.  


After a few long moments while me and the several people on the street watched everything, dumbfounded and clueless, the first driver started making his way out of the car. He was dressed in a semi-casual office suit and had dark brown hair and a goatee. He was shaking, partly confused and scared, and partly infuriated at the incident and the unfixable damage on his car.  


Immediately afterwards, the other driver stepped out. Well, I was honestly glad they were both fine. His car was an old-looking Honda, and the accident certainly did not help make it look any better. The driver looked pretty young compared to the first one, probably because of his short stature, baggy jeans and hoodie and his hair dyed blonde, with his natural, darker roots already starting to show. He looked just as angry as the slightly older man.  


“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, you fucking asshole?! Look at my goddamn car, you almost killed me! Why you drivin’ so fast, you piece of shit?!”  


“Some people got a fucking job to go to, dickhead! I drove into your car ‘cause of this drunk shit who—“  


__As soon as the Toyota driver pointed towards the drunk man, he fell silent, seeing his figure sprawled across the street, face down and with his head lying in a generous pool of blood. Accusations from the short guy followed, along with heated threats from both sides, and the few people nearby were too scared to intervene, lest the conflict got too violent and got more people involved. The blond man had quite a mouth on him, relentlessly threatening to beat the other up, sue him, telling him how it was his fault that the drunk guy was going to die if he hadn’t already. Someone had already called an ambulance and two people had rushed to him to see if there was anything that could still be done until the paramedics arrived, but probably to no avail. He had probably gotten so wasted he didn’t even notice the car, especially at that speed.  
_ _

__But the brunet’s violent warnings turned out not to be as empty as one might have thought, as the shorter man kept pushing him and yelling at him but didn’t even have time to see the other’s fist before it hit him in the stomach, with a power that one would rarely allow oneself to use against someone else. For a second, the blond stumbled to stay on his feet, but immediately fell on his back, groaning in pain, shock and confusion in between coughs of blood.  
_ _

__As if that wasn’t enough, the blond man stopped groaning for one second, just to get overwhelmed by a series of quite powerful kicks in the ribs and stomach, at which the two or three bystanders stared in shock. But Toyota man wouldn’t stop at just this, no way.  
_ _

__He wasted no time in crushing the poor blond’s face under his feet. Hit after hit, he stomped his face violently in a manner that did not exactly show enjoyment, but a kind of wild anger and hate mixed with desperation – hardly seen in people with their mental faculties intact. During this time one, of the bystanders – a young man of rather modest height, with long, light brown hair and dressed quite elegantly – was trying to run up to him in an attempt to stop him, truthfully, a little later than he should have. But as he got close enough to him, he could finally take the scene in properly, of what I can only assume was a person on the ground, lying still in his own blood, with an indescribable visceral mess where there should have been a head.  
_ _

__His courage must have deserted him completely that instant, as he stopped and barely moved a single muscle for a few seconds. When the attacker looked up at the long-haired man with the eyes of a rabid animal, groaning threateningly, all he could muster were some warnings to stop at once, as he had already called the police and nothing he was doing would make things any better for him. Reasonable request, he probably thought to himself, but the driver did not respond to it. Not with words, at least. His body started shaking even more than before, almost convulsing in anger, but his bloodshot eyes never left the other man out of sight.  
_ _

__I say he did not respond with words because, a few seconds after that, the volume of his groans and growls increased horrifyingly. Suddenly, his mouth started bleeding, the liquid coming at first in singular, thin trails down his jaw and then in frantic, vulgar gushes after he opened his mouth. And as he gapped open his mouth to let out a wild, terrifying screech, a bloody chunk of fleshy aspect fell out and down to the ground. The man’s mouth stayed open a couple of long moments – his tongue was severed almost from the half.  
_ _

__I could hear a “Stop right there!” and “Don’t make another step!” from a relative distance, from a single cop, probably brought here by one of the witnesses of the accident. He slowed down his pace, his face clearly shocked by the sight, and his gun pointed at the criminal. In a fit of panic, like a cornered and confused animal, the latter’s first instinct was to get away, in any way possible. He started sprinting in the direction of the long-haired man, likely in an attempt to discourage the policeman from shooting too close to an innocent. The cop noticed this, and indeed, refrained from pulling the trigger, instead trying to get a better aim at the crazed driver.  
_ _

__And perhaps through instinct or mere confusion or reflex, the other man, thinking the driver sought to jump at him, attempted to counter his “attack” by blocking his advance and throwing a random punch – which showed that he most likely hadn’t ever fought someone in his life. As a reaction to this attempt to delay his escape, the driver only had time to respond with another punch of his own, simply swift and powerful.  
_ _

__The hit the younger-looking man got in the throat was enough to knock him down and clear the way for the other man to try to get away. Immediately after seeing this, the cop fired his gun three times to stop him once and for all. The first bullet missed, the second shot went through his left thigh and the third went through his back and finally brought him to the ground.  
_ _

__And if only he had pulled the trigger just a few seconds sooner, maybe one less family would have had to mourn their dead son. As he ran up closer to the two of them, he realized that the man with long hair lay on the ground unmoved, with fresh, warm blood oozing out of his broken skull. His eyes were half open and stared dead into nothingness, almost as if begging some higher power for a chance to give him back the life he had lost so unfairly. A small pool of crimson also started to form under the driver’s figure. He writhed, groaning faintly, one of his arms around his stomach, where the bullet had gone through.__  


From then on, all I remember is that the ambulance eventually got there, along with the police. Resuscitation attempts were made in vain. The brunet driver, too, drew his last breath before the paramedics arrived. A car accident that initially killed one person ended up claiming three more lives. The street was red with their blood. All I did this time was watch – stare like a junkie into a hypnotizing pattern of moving shapes and lines. I don’t know if I had truly been scared for my safety at any point. It even seems a bit unfair that I was the one to escape with my life. These people may not have been very relevant to society as a whole – or maybe even to their friends, or family. But who’s to say I deserved to live more than they did? For all one knows, they could have all met in different circumstances, and that way their destinies would have changed completely – and maybe others’ destinies, too.  


__One who finds himself in a situation such as mine should just mind his own business. But I can’t help but feel sorry for them. I can’t help but feel sad about the people who will miss them. Maybe the whole incident did not truly make me fear for my life, but for a second it stirred up a spark in me – like a vague, newly-found will to live. It was, however, a mere moment. And the second it was gone, I looked around the street and all I saw was four bodies lying on the ground. Maybe that hope was just an illusion. And with all that’s happened, it is hard for me to believe I’m still meant to have any kind of future. My present is numb and frozen, the result of a series of catastrophes started by what seems now to have been merely the soft flapping of a butterfly’s wings – and now all I have left is the past and the distant memories in it.  
_ _

__I said you never miss anything in the world the way you miss the things you destroyed yourself. And maybe that’s true. But sometimes I wander too deep inside my own mind. And sometimes I just find myself missing moments, days, an entire life, that I know all too well I’ve never even lived.  
_ _

__Just an hour earlier, before the accident, I thought I had hit rock bottom. I thought I’d lost everything. Then I lost more._ _


End file.
